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Keeping a full social calendar may reduce your risk of developing dementia, say researchers.

Socially active people who were not easily stressed had a 50 per cent lower risk of developing dementia compared with men and women who were isolated and prone to distress, the researchers report in the journal Neurology.

"In the past, studies have shown that chronic distress can affect parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, possibly leading to dementia," says Dr Hui-Xin Wang of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the study.

"But our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further."

An estimated 24 million people worldwide have memory loss, problems with orientation and other symptoms that signal Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Researchers believe the number of people with dementia may quadruple by 2040, underlining the importance of better understanding the condition.

The Swedish study involved 506 elderly people who did not have dementia when first examined. The volunteers were given questionnaires about their personality traits and lifestyles and then tracked for six years. Over that time, 144 people developed dementia.

The study found that people who were more socially active and less stressed were 50 per cent less likely to be diagnosed with the condition.

"The good news is, lifestyle factors can be modified as opposed to genetic factors which cannot be controlled," says Wang. "But these are early results, so how exactly mental attitude influences risk for dementia is not clear."